Disipio playing key role in Capers unbeaten streak

SYDNEY — Ciera Disipio is off to a strong start, and so is the unbeaten Cape Breton Capers women’s soccer team.

Third-year midfielder Ciera Disipio has been a big reason for the Cape Breton Capers women’s soccer team’s early success in the 2017 season. The 19-year-old from Ottawa has three goals in CBU’s first three games.

The third-year midfielder from Ottawa has played a key role in her team’s 3-0-0 record out of the gates.

“Throughout the summer, my goal was to become as fit as I ended last season to save time coming into this season and to really get going where we left off as a team,” Disipio, 19, said prior to team practice on Wednesday. “But the drive that pushed me was our last game of the season last year, losing on home turf (in the Atlantic University Sport semifinal) to St. FX the way we did, it was our driving force behind this season and just reinventing ourselves as a team and proving what we can do in the AUS.”

Disipio has found the back of the net in each of CBU’s victories, and is tied with Keona Simmonds for the team lead in goals. Her impact was apparent last weekend in New Brunswick, where she scored a goal and an assist in both a 3-0 victory over the New Brunswick Varsity Reds and a 5-0 thumping of the Moncton Aigles Bleues.

For her efforts, she was named the AUS female athlete of the week.

“It’s been a great start,” she said. “We had a bit more of a challenging weekend last weekend with the two games instead of the one in our home opener, and with UNB, there’s a bit of a rivalry there.”

Disipio comes from a soccer family, and carries on the tradition started by her two older sisters: 23-year-old Samantha and 27-year-old Candice. Disipio, however, is the first to play at the university level. Samantha played two seasons with Algonquin College in Ottawa.

“I met the girls and everyone was super welcoming, which I had heard about just from the East Coast in general coming from Ottawa,” she said of choosing CBU. “It basically fit everything that I was looking for in the sense that I wanted to get away from home and travel, I wanted that close-knit school feel — I came from a school with maybe 1,000 kids — so knowing everyone was big for me. The small classes, too, were great.”

The Capers, third place in the AUS standings and ranked No. 9 in the country, have outscored their opponents 14-0 in their first three games of the 2017 season. But they’ll face a pair of tough teams this weekend.

CBU plays fifth-place Acadia (2-1-1) tonight and takes on the first-place Memorial Sea-Hawks (4-0-0), Saturday. The Sea-Hawks should be an especially daunting matchup, since they’ve outscored their opponents 16-1 so far.

“Acadia and Memorial have been at the top of the pack the last couple of years, so we’re certainly trying to prepare ourselves for them, but it’s one game at a time,” said Capers head coach Ness Timmons. “(Tonight), we have to look at Acadia, and less than 24 hours later, we have to face Memorial, who’s sitting on top, so it should be interesting.”

The Capers men (2-0-1) earned a win and a tie in their games in New Brunswick last weekend. After a 1-1 draw against the Varsity Reds, they battled to a 1-0 triumph over Moncton.

CBU, ranked No. 8 in the country, are in fourth place in the standings, sandwiched between the fifth-place Axemen (2-1-1) and third-place Sea-Hawks (3-1-0), so it will be an important two-game set for the defending AUS champions.

Tonight’s games against Acadia will be played at 5 p.m. (women) and 7:15 p.m. (men) at the Cape Breton Health Recreation Complex. Saturday versus Memorial, kickoff is at 1 p.m. (women) and 3:15 p.m. (men).